THE COUNTERFEIT CANDIDATE

I have always been fascinated by conspiracy theories; the Roswell UFO incident, JFK’s assassination, the moon landings, Princess Diana’s car crash, all come to mind.

But they don’t come much bigger than the one surrounding the apparent deaths of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. It’s a highly controversial topic that has generated many books, articles and documentaries and the truth is that, even today, views differ on what really happened.

As a student, I studied Hitler and the rise and fall of The Third Reich at London University, where I completed a degree in History and Modern Politics. Part of my academic research included reading Alan Bullock’s Hitler: A study in Tyranny and Hugh Trevor-Roper’s The last days of Hitler. I always had a gut feeling that Hitler wasn’t the kind of man to take his own life, but then again, there is a great deal of compelling evidence, and eye-witness testimony, to suggest he did. For the purposes of writing the THE COUNTERFEIT CANDIDATE , I went with my gut. I couldn’t help wondering, “What if….”

The basic idea for THE COUNTERFEIT CANDIDATE has been buried inside my head for over forty years but, it took the totally unexpected arrival of a three-month lockdown to turn it into a reality. Like millions of other people, when the virus struck and the world shut down, I lost all my work and found myself at home wondering what to do. I was a television director, with nothing to direct.

So, I decided to finally have a go at writing the story. I had no idea if I was capable of doing it and trust me, when I say, no one was more surprised than me, that the book finally got written.